Really? You don't think anyone seriously gearing up to connect to the NBN has enough resource to do that in parallel? Do you think the ISPs are actually going to be digging the trenches themselves?

Who are we talking about here?

iiNet - Michael is focused on building his company to be the biggest ISP in Australia. He sold his New Zealand interests to Vodafone.TPG - Also interested in being a big Australian player and going after iiNet.Internode - purchased/merged with iiNet last year.Optus - Owned by Singtel. Already own a 40% share in SCCN.Telstra - Just pulled out of New Zealand, selling its interests to Vodafone.

Ok I just accounted for 80% of the Australian market, so who are you talking about?

Sure, what percentage of the market do they represent and what interest would they have in New Zealand?

Hang on, so your argument has changed from "They can't do two things at once" to "Why would they want to do it?"

I can't see why any ISP, regardless of size or if you can name drop their CEO like he's your mate, wouldn't look at all available options for bandwidth. Be it to New Zealand, the US or Fiji.

Does that mean they're going to actually connect up? No. But research and commitment are two very different things. You started off saying they'd be too busy to bother, but changed tack to "What would the benefit be to them?"

That's a good question and one I don't know the answer to (Demand from their customers would be my guess, though) That's why they'd do some research in the first place.

That's a good question and one I don't know the answer to (Demand from their customers would be my guess, though) That's why they'd do some research in the first place.

The only obvious driver I can see is low latency porn as they can't host that in Australia.

I don't understand what the benefit of low latency porn is over just pulling it from the US on anyone of the 4 existing cables.

I guess that it could be cheaper transit, but you also need those servers to have demand at other times of day. I guess there could be value in pulling the content from New Zealand and then routing it back at the US in their evening time zones?

However how much .us capacity does the 20% have pushing in to the US that couldn't be used by pushing video content that they can host in Australia?

That's a good question and one I don't know the answer to (Demand from their customers would be my guess, though) That's why they'd do some research in the first place.

The only obvious driver I can see is low latency porn as they can't host that in Australia.

I don't understand what the benefit of low latency porn is over just pulling it from the US on anyone of the 4 existing cables.

I guess that it could be cheaper transit, but you also need those servers to have demand at other times of day. I guess there could be value in pulling the content from New Zealand and then routing it back at the US in their evening time zones?

However how much .us capacity does the 20% have pushing in to the US that couldn't be used by pushing video content that they can host in Australia?

porn sites can afford to use cdn's, but even then they generally are looking to push a lot of data cheaply and easily. so will host in US or EU.

if you compare the cost of gigabit transit and colocation in US, EU, and NZ/AU, I think you'll find it doesn't really make sense for sites with high volume requirements to host in NZ.

Call be a bit thick on this, but it occurred to me to wonder if there are some VTT execs who are proposing this cable because they can't get traction to light up more SCCN Akl-Syd capacity?

AJ pointed out, only about 5% of the cable capacity is actually light.

Are the other two major shareholders in the cable just attempting to protect their profits and keep traffic on the NZ-US leg that might start moving NZ-Syd-SomeoneElsesNetwork if transit to .au dropped in price?

DonGould: Who else wonders if Verison and Optus are the real problem here?

Call be a bit thick on this, but it occurred to me to wonder if there are some VTT execs who are proposing this cable because they can't get traction to light up more SCCN Akl-Syd capacity?

AJ pointed out, only about 5% of the cable capacity is actually light.

Are the other two major shareholders in the cable just attempting to protect their profits and keep traffic on the NZ-US leg that might start moving NZ-Syd-SomeoneElsesNetwork if transit to .au dropped in price?

Telstraclear, Vocus and Odyssey are already backhauling some of their US traffic via Australia it appears.